DFWI:In the News

Winter Road Salt - The Next Acid Rain - May Threaten Adirondack "Queen of American Lakes"

Cheryl Lyn Dybas - National Geographic

November 1, 2014 - Tendrils of fog curl above the waters of the Queen of American Lakes, as Lake George in New York's Adirondack Mountains is known. Biting winds gusted out of the northwest yesterday, and an early snow is forecast for tomorrow. But for this one afternoon in late fall, cold winds
fetching across slate-gray waves have gone elsewhere. The queen is holding her breath, granting one last look at autumn on a day that seems suspended in time.

Lake George is waiting, her future in question. For the first time in the history of the 32-milelong lake – a gift from long-ago glaciers that once covered the land, then melted – our actions may have imperiled her health.

Two centuries and more ago, it was a different picture. "Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1791. "Formed by a contour of mountains into a basin…finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves…down to the water-edge."

Rensselaer Biologist Honored for Work Protecting Lake George Against Invasive Species

Biology Professor Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer Served as Founding Member of S.A.V.E. Committee

Troy, N.Y.-September 11, 2014- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute biologist Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer was recently honored by the FUND for Lake George with the James D. Corbett award for her work on a committee tasked with preventing the introduction of invasive plant and animal species into Lake George.

Message From Rick Relyea - Four new post-docs
November 22, 2014
“ … four individuals will be joining my research group in the coming months as post-docs. They bring a wide range of expertise in aquatic ecology, including fisheries ecology, zooplankton ecology, ecotoxicology, community (i.e. food web) ecology, and ecosystem ecology. They also have strengths in monitoring aquatic habitats and conducting lab and mesocosm experiments. All four individuals are rising stars in their respective fields and I feel very fortunate that they have accepted our offer to join the team.”

Jefferson Project Website
Project partners are collaborating on a Jefferson Project at Lake George website to include an overview of the project; images, video, and graphic visuals; a summary of people to convey the interdisciplinary nature of the project; news releases; an “in the news” section; links to published research; blog posts; social media feed; a summary of hardware and innovations to hardware in use on the project; and a “data you can use” section.

A Clearer View: Jefferson Project plows through winter to collect more data on Lake George

By Brian Nearing-Times Union

Monday-January 5, 2015--Lake George Dmitry Kalyadin turned his back to a stiff breeze in 35-degree air as he finished installing weather instruments on a metal tower. The Russian native, now a Florida transplant, was alone that December afternoon, on the north end of Lake George, at a snow-covered state boat launch in Ticonderoga.

Most people have no reason to be at the Mossy Point launch in winter, but Kalyadin was part of the Jefferson Project, a multimillion-dollar effort aimed at making Lake George the most measured and best understood body of water on the planet. The goal is to help protect the legendary clear waters that draw so many people, some of whom may be inadvertently making the lake sick.

Kalyadin was finishing the last of seven sensing stations scattered around the lake that will track weather
and water quality in streams. The effort was launched in 2013 by computing giant IBM, RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, and lake advocacy group Fund for Lake George.

"I'll be back in January to finish calibrating the instruments," said Kalyadin, a systems engineer with
Florida-based YSI Integrated Systems and Services, hired to fabricate and install the stations. "It will
probably be colder than it is today."

State-of-the-Art Visualization Lab to Display Streaming Data in Real Time

BOLTON LANDING, NY - October 20, 2014- The Jefferson Project at Lake George announced new milestones in the multimillion-dollar collaboration that seeks to understand and manage the complex factors impacting Lake George, a pristine natural ecosystem and cornerstone of New York’s tourism industry. Through their partnership, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM and the FUND for Lake George have developed preliminary models of key natural processes within the watershed. As part of the first phase of the project, a network of 12 sensor platforms including vertical profilers and tributary monitoring stations are now being deployed around Lake George and its tributaries, providing an unprecedented amount of data for researchers.

A new data visualization laboratory at the Margaret A. and David M. Darrin ’40 Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) in Bolton Landing was unveiled on October 17, 2104. The new 2,000-square-foot laboratory features advanced computing and graphics systems that allow researchers to visualize sophisticated models and incoming data on weather, runoff and circulation patterns. The data visualization laboratory will display streaming data from various sensors in and around the lake in real-time.

The three project partners offer unique expertise in fields as varied as biology, freshwater ecology, computer science, physics, engineering, cyber-physical systems, environmental advocacy and remote sensing. Working together, those experts are developing novel ways of collecting, modeling and analyzing data from the lake and its surrounding environment.